I think, for the first time, watching the smoke roll in from forest fires thousands of miles away, listening to the news go on and on about this fascist nut or this racist piece of garbage, and none of it pushing back, not effectively anyway, and knowing that this authoritarian menace is not going away, not until the rest of us start imposing real, actual consequences, and climate change is just another buzzword when in reality, it’s killing us all, and all the dystopian stories of my youth are real, real goddamnit, and this is it, this is really it, I think, and for the first time, I truly, truly believe… this may be the end of the world.

The end of us all.

We are in fucking hell, and it’s our own making, as all good hells are.

It’s the end of the world and not just as we know it, because we know this world. Near-future sci-fi writers have been screaming at us about it for the better part of a century or longer.

William Gibson is a prophet; Blade Runner is fact, yet to happen.

These are the end times, as Jonathan Hickman would write. We would tell you to pray, but it wouldn’t do any good. You have earned what is coming to you.

So, I write, and maybe the survivors will one day read my stories, and know that they were written in the hope that one day, they might be read, and not destined to the ashes.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1211 words, novel: Father Lightning